


You Don't Know

by octoberland



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 15:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7719385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octoberland/pseuds/octoberland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little vignette set during Consumed. This is the conversation I wanted them to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Know

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the bare bone of this back when Consumed originally aired but never got to polish or post it due to real life circumstances. Now my circumstances have changed and I'm finally going back through my old documents and working on stuff. Consumed re-aired this past weekend and of course I watched which led me to thinking about this piece. It's set in the women's shelter and it's what I think could have happened had they not been interrupted by the sound of the walkers down the hall. Or at least what I wish had happened.
> 
> No copyright infringement intended. I do not own these characters. Thank you for reading.

"You don't know what I did."

"I don't care," he said.

He felt her stiffen next to him and he stole a sideways glance at her.

They were lying on the bottom bunk, bone tired and weary, and yet hopped up in the way that only exhaustion can make you, wires strung tight on a piano ready to snap. Neither of them had slept well in months, maybe not even since they first met back at the camp near Atlanta. Things weren't that bad then, least not in his mind. It wasn't that different than his life in the trailer park; people doing what they had to, hunting, fishing, stealing supplies. He'd had his brother back then too, goading him, getting him high occasionally, roughing him up the way older brothers did. But Merle was gone now and so was that camp. Things had changed so much since then. 

Until that fateful night there had been geeks here and there but never a herd, not like that. That's when things had changed for her, for Carol. He'd seen it that next morning when they were taking care of the dead, seen it in the way she'd cried and whaled on her dead husband, like a dam had suddenly burst, and he knew. Deep down he knew what it was like; that anger, that sorrow. He'd never admitted it to a soul. Merle knew, of course, but they'd never talked about it.

Since then they'd been on the run with barely a moment to breathe. Seemed like one obstacle or another was always just around the corner, more often than not coming from living men these days and not the walking dead ones. He'd take a walker herd over this shit right about now. He was tired of the kidnappings, tired of their people being murdered and getting attacked, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let the woman lying next to him think she was even one tenth as bad as the people that'd preyed on them.

Daryl leaned up on his elbow, towering over Carol.

"I don't care," he said again, words more forceful than before, voice gruff from cigarettes and a lack of sleep.

He watched the various emotions sliding behind her eyes, doors opening and shutting so quick he didn’t think anybody else would even see them 'cept him. He watched as she tensed, a foal ready to bolt.  
Without thinking, he grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. "I don't," This time the words came out angry, angrier than he'd intended.

"Sorry," he mumbled, ashamed. He let his hand rest on her chest in the space where her collar fell open, skin against skin so that he could feel the rise and fall as she breathed, waited for her to get up or make some snide joke, but neither happened.

Instead, he felt her slender hand come to rest on top of his strong one. Her touch was hesitant, like some sort of winged insect drawn to a light but afraid of getting burned. She tried to speak but no sound came out, like she couldn't quite form words in this moment. In the dark he heard her quiet intake of breath, that little gasp of air before words come out, and then… silence.

"You don't owe me nothing," he said, looking down at her, long hair getting in his eyes. He moved his hand away and sat up.

"I killed her." She said, finally, tone flat.

Daryl assumed she meant Karen.

"They were sick," he said, looking back at her.

Carol sat upright, matching Daryl.

"I killed Lizzie," she said, her gaze drifting to the window.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. She stood and walked over to the window, placed her fingers tenderly against the glass, and for a moment Daryl saw the old Carol, the one that'd lost Sophia.

"She killed Mika." She said at last, eyes still trained on the spot where her fingers touched the glass.

Daryl waited.

"She almost killed Judith."

He saw her tense again. She crossed her arms and stood taller.

"I had to…" but her voice broke, like she wasn't so sure.

Daryl watched her. He'd watched her enough over the last year to know something was off. He worked all the possibilities round in his head, chewing at them like a piece of fat off a steak until finally…

"She wasn't turnt," he said. It wasn't a question.

Carol's head tilted. She looked at him. "No." Then she looked away. Her gaze drifted around the room, traveling over the walls, the bunk beds, until finally resting on the little desk with the book on it.

Daryl stood and took a step towards her, small and gingerly just like he would in the forest.

"You ain't like them," he said, thinking of all the bad people they'd encountered.

Carol's expression hardened. "We become what we need to," she said, eyes turning on him, daring him to contradict her.

"Yeah," he said. "Look at you. You survived. That's what you became. A survivor."

Carol glared at him. "That's what they were trying to do too." She shifted from one foot to the other, glanced at the door and then back at him. "All the people we've fought? The Governor, the people at Terminus? They were just trying to survive."

Daryl took another step closer, more purposeful this time. "We're not like them." He closed the distance, stood right in her face. "YOU'RE not like them."

Carol wavered, seemed unsteady on her feet. She stole another glance at the door.

"You gonna leave?" he asked. His voice deflated and he knew he sounded like a child but he didn’t care.

She looked like she was thinking about it. She stood there, silent, for a long moment. Then, quiet as a mouse, so quiet he almost wasn't sure he heard it, she whispered, "No."

Daryl felt a wave of relief wash over him, and triumph. "That's why you ain't like them." He said, turning on his heel and plopping down on the bottom bunk. Carol followed suit, climbing up on to the top bunk, and Daryl had to resist the urge to grab her foot and pull her down to the bottom one with him.

After a moment she spoke again. "If there's a hell, I'm going to it." She said.

The words cut him. That she could think that about herself tore at him, made him feel helpless. So he turned to bravado, which was really all he knew how to do.

"You ain't going nowhere. Not if I can help it."

He thought he heard her laugh but he wasn't sure.

In the morning she was still there, breathing softly, sleeping, and Daryl prayed he could keep his word, keep her safe, even if it was just for one more day.


End file.
